Hollingsworth, 54, who volunteers with the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission surveying timber rattlesnakes, took the 5-foot snake with a tell-tale bulge to the Animal Rescue League Shelter and Wildlife Center in Verona on Monday. A veterinarian who evaluated the reptile on Tuesday has called in a specialist to perform the “high-risk” surgery.

“I have never seen anything quite like this,” said Jill Argall, director of the center. “This is a little beyond what we can do.”

The co-founder of the Pittsburgh Herpetological Society said she was surprised that the snake swallowed an artificial egg.

“That’s a good one,” said Dolly Ellenbrock, 63, of Aspinwall. “I’ve probably never heard of a snake swallowing a ceramic egg.”

Black rat snakes are frequent visitors to suburban backyards, farms and fields from Connecticut to North Carolina, according to the National Wildlife Federation. They can range from 3½ to 7 feet long and live primarily on rodents, amphibians and young birds.

Snakes are opportunistic hunters.

“They will eat eggs if they come across them,” said Edward Bennett, 60, of Franklin Park, a veterinarian who works with reptiles and has been called upon to remove foreign objects from their bellies.

Bennett recently did surgery to remove a fish hook from a water turtle, more common objects that reptiles swallow after smelling fish or bait on them.

A 2½-foot Northern water snake got more than it bargained for two years ago at Keystone Lake after swallowing a fish that had a hook in its mouth.

Park officials found the snake tangled in fishing line. The fish - and the hook - were inside the snake’s stomach.

The Animal Rescue League Shelter and Wildlife Center also treated that snake, dubbed Captain for the fictional character Captain Hook from the story “Peter Pan.”

An X-ray showed the natural course of digestion had pushed the hook to the snake’s colon, making surgical intervention difficult because of the risk of infection.

Veterinarians instead treated the snake with enemas and waited about a week for the hook to pass.

That’s probably not the course of treatment for the snake that Alan Hollingsworth took from his neighbor’s chicken coop.

“I knew something had to be done, he said. “That ceramic egg takes up his whole stomach.”